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Recommend this exhibition

For hundreds of years, artists from other
countries have come to Britain and designed important and beautiful
medals, adding a new element to British art history. This
exhibition features a range of medals spanning six centuries, many
of which document important historical events and famous
figures.

The Museum’s collection contains over 70,000 medals. Usually
designed to be commemorative, these small objects convey their
messages through a combination of text and image. This show
includes many of the highlights of the collection and explores the
lives of immigrant medallists through their work.

The earliest known piece to have been conceived as a medal and
made in Britain was a portrait of Mary Tudor, designed and modelled
by Italian Jacopo da Trezzo in the mid-16th century. From this
point on, artists from many countries played a vital role in the
development of medallic art in Britain, and have continued to do so
right up to the present day.

The exhibition showcases work by the most notable of these
artists and charts their successes – and also, on occasion, their
rivalries with British-born artists. Portraits of celebrated
figures – from King Charles II to Winston Churchill – help
illustrate their imaginative abilities and technical skills,
capturing significant moments in history. Recent medals by
European, Indian and Korean artists look at the revival of the
medium in contemporary Britain and the new ideas brought to the art
of medal making by artists from other countries.